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19 May, 2012

Walkabout Core Mechanism

Time do get a bit of work done on Walkabout, beyond merely drawing pictures for the setting.

The whole mechanism in Walkabout is based around the
concept of drawing tokens from a bag. This is designed to be shamanistic in its
feel. Not derived from any one particular culture, but more of a mechaphor(1)
describing the way the characters pick and choose elements of the past to help
forge the future. It feels wrong in this game to use dice or cards because they
are such a part of gaming culture already; I want this game to feel different
as it is played. It needs to be visceral, with the players immersing themselves
in the culture of the wayfarers they are playing.

Unlike a lot of quirky game mechanisms, this needs to
blend into the background, it needs to be intuitive and it needs to help drive
story. I know that the FUBAR dice (derived from the ideas of Otherkind) work
well in this regard. So they can serve as the rough basis of the token drawing
mechanisms in Walkabout.

At the simplest level…

All characters have a pool of tokens. These include white
tokens representing the worst possible scenario, black tokens representing the
worst possible scenario, and coloured tokens that represent a variety of thing
depending on their colour and the nature of the action being undertaken (red,
green and blue).

Characters also have an assortment of traits defining
their abilities to exceed in certain types of task, and the impairments that
afflict them.

When a player describes a task being performed by their character,
there is a chance that it will simply succeed. This is the case if the GM
simply wants to progress the story along, and if the character has the
requisite traits to justify such an action.

If the GM declares that a test is required for a certain
task, the player must describe in a single sentence what their character is
trying to do. This sentence must describe how the character is providing a
benefit (for someone or something in the scene), a complication/penalty, or a
transformation (with effects that are neither obviously positive nor negative
to the target).

The player then determines what traits they might be able
to apply to the situation to gain a benefit.

Any other players on the table may allocate traits
possessed by the character that might cause complications or problems.

Footnote

(1)A
Mechaphor is a metaphorical mechanism. In a roleplaying context it is where a
player participates in some kind of action that mimics the task being performed
by their character, or otherwise engages in ritual to get themselves into the mindset
of the narrative.

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